The possible meaning of fleeting feelings

“So we were getting it on, like, fully, when I realized that he was…wearing his socks,” my girlfriend recounted to me.

We gave each other a united ewwww grimace.

“And that was it. I knew I was done.”

She left him because he left on his socks.

And she told him that.

I can’t be with you. You make love with your socks on. I’m leaving. It’s all the reason I need.

Of course, that’s not the only reason she left. And she did him the service of filling in a few blanks.

Insight may come in a flash, but it’s the result of accumulated noticing–whether you notice it or not.

The ‘I just knew it’ moments in life are often triggered by little things. Annoyances, nuances, subtle incidentals–soft inklings so seemingly flip that we’re prone to discredit them. Poo poo on that intensely intense but fleeting emotion–lovely or harsh. Miff miff on that big vision that just cycled through your consciousness. Pshaw on that white flash of passion–the lusty-love kind and the flare-of-rage kind.

But those spins and flashes and pangs are being felt because you’re ready to feel them–and they matter. The trick is to pay attention to them. Imagine sand streaming in an hour glass, each grain forming a pyramiding pile of sand. Until one grain punctuates the pile and the tall triangle collapses into a flatter triangle. It only takes one grain of awareness to shift everything.